Serving soldier arrested for robbery says he got the rifle for the robbery from Boko Haram

Abel Solomon, 30, one of the soldiers fighting Boko Haram insurgents has been arrested for attempting to rob a filling station in Abuja. He said the operation would have fetched him N20m if it had scaled through. He confessed that the Pump Action Rifle recovered from him, belonged to a Boko Haram insurgent.

He said, after one of their wars with the Boko Haram members, he had taken and buried the rifle. When he and his gang members started brainstorming on how to rob the filling station, he went and unearthed it. He said he has served at the 58 and 509 Signal Regiments before moving to 143 Battalion in 2014.

Solomon, who joined the Nigerian Army in 2005, added: “In August 2015, I took a three-month sick leave because I sustained an injury from a bomb. I took the rifle and one of my Ak47 magazines. I was entitled to 10 magazines. I took the weapons to my village in Kafanchan, Kaduna State, where I treated myself.

In December, I was told that there was a N20m job in a filling station in Abuja. The money involved was hard to resist. The money would have changed my life if we had succeeded. I would have quit the Army and gone to live a quiet life.” Solomon, attached to the Nigeria Army Signal Command, is now worried that he had overstayed his 3 months leave…. n hopes Mr. President can help him out….